


Don't Ask Me To Choose You

by Languid_Victorian_Poetess



Series: Ships in the Night [2]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Original Work
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Almost Kiss, Dialogue Heavy, Dungeons & Dragons Campaign, F/M, Feels, I know i write like a victorian i really am not sorry about that, Internal Monologue, No Plot/Plotless, Original Fiction, Post-Battle, Slow Dancing, fluff adjacent, i mean nothing bad happens so it's fluff like, this is really the closest I get to some fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:42:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27181285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Languid_Victorian_Poetess/pseuds/Languid_Victorian_Poetess
Summary: During a break in the battle, Irie and Caprice share a moment on the roof and finally talk about this thing they've been avoiding for so long.
Relationships: Original Character(s)/Original Character(s), Original Female Character/Original Male Character
Series: Ships in the Night [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1984165
Kudos: 1





	Don't Ask Me To Choose You

**Author's Note:**

> So I'll be honest, I stayed up till 5am writing this last night. For my dnd players that I know will read this, yes I did write this literally right after game. I spent a very long time combing through old fics and timelines to get the details right, but is anyone surprised? Also this is like fluff adjacent, I think? Nothing like actively sucks, minus the threat of imminent death, so I'd say it's fluff adjacent. Feel free to disagree.
> 
> Anyway, please enjoy this little soft thing!

It was quiet. Well maybe quiet wasn’t the right word, but after the sounds of battle from the past couple of hours, the world felt softer. Gentler. Almost still. Somewhere out there, the Fae Queen and her army were lying in wait. 

Caprice picked his way carefully through the brothel and up to the second floor. Everyone else was still crowded downstairs, Leo was asleep against Jezabel’s shoulder, Magda’s head was in Leonora’s lap, Eliza was busy cleaning the gore out of her and Nellie’s hair, Janus was picking through the kitchen. The bodies of the dead and undead alike littered the floor. He found Irie silent on the roof.

She sat at the edge, feet dangling over the side, her bow beside her. Her hood was down for once. Caprice thought of the way she’d grabbed him by his shirt and pressed her lips to his, even though the others were surely watching. He thought of the way she’d left him alone on the deck of the ship, staring up at the stars. He thought of the feel of her calloused hands against his cheeks and waking up to deep blue eyes, like staring at the sea.

He sat beside her gingerly, wincing as the movement jostled his bad shoulder. His head still ached from the whispers that had consumed and left him half-dead. Irie’s eyes were on him immediately, piercing and cold. 

“What do you want?” She scoffed. Her fingers ran across her bow, tracing the inlaid wood, plucking the string.

“You saved my life,” Cap replied. The air between them was as quiet as the world around them. A breeze caressed them, sending her hair into her face while his stirred against his shoulders. 

“I almost let you die,” Irie said. She didn’t stop to soften the blow, blunt its edges. Maybe it should have hurt.

“I know.” Again, the memory of her hands hard and urgent on his cheeks, the outline of her dark wings angelically cast behind her, the harsh press of her lips in the alleyway.

“You know that if it came down to you or them,” she jabbed a finger at the ladder and those waiting somewhere in the bar below. “I would pick them.”

“I know.”

“I made a promise. Several.”

“You did.”

“What do you want?” She fixed him with a glare. The autumn air was cool on his skin. They had known each other almost a year now, just a couple months shy, and he was assaulted by the memories. All the times they had almost died, all the times they had cared for each other. The singular moments in between, the barest scrape of their knuckles. The solitary kiss before tonight, one that he had to admit held the ulterior motives. Did that night count? Caprice didn’t think so. They’d been a little delirious on victory, a little drunk on the night and the taste of alcohol. 

What about the ones before? Those sleepless nights in Cairo, the sentinels in the darkness against their enemies. The ones after? Standing at the railing after his trial, when he’d been ready to tell her that yes, maybe it had only been a few short months, but there was something undeniable about them. Something inevitable. She had said she couldn’t and walked away. What about after that? Those split seconds of charged eye contact from across the room, the vigil in the hallowed halls in Shanghai, the close quarters of the ship back to London. And since then? Their fingers intertwined on the docks a few short days before. Bare moments and brief ones. Could he tell her that he wanted more of those? Fleeting as they were?

His confession from earlier that night still weighed between them, the graze of their lips, the desperation of knowing there might not be one to follow. Maybe they were a little delirious and drunk then too, but on something else. Was she thinking about it? Or only about the blood staining the wooden floor? The dead littering the streets, the battle that wasn’t over yet? **_(_ ** _Save me a dance_ , he’d said and she’d kissed him so she didn’t have to answer. **_)_ **

“What do you want?” Irie repeated, but it had lost its razor tip point. How long had he let the silence linger while he was lost in memories of their time together?

“To say thank you,” Caprice answered. He rubbed absently at his tattoos the blue waves rippling along his dark skin. “What do you want, Irie?”

She shook her head and he was unsurprised when she evaded the question. “You know I would pick them over you. Yet you’re still here. Why?”

He shrugged. “I know what it’s like to make that vow.” The wind blew harder and a thick strand of her hair leapt from her braid to block off her eyes. He reached a hand forward tentatively and when she made no move to stop him, he tucked it back behind her ear. 

“I would kill you to save them.”

“Yes.”

Her eyes crackled with blue lightning, his hand was hovering by her cheek, not quite touching but almost. Nearly. Wasn’t that how things always were between them? 

Neither of them moved, suspended on the brink of wherever her questions led. What answers was she expecting? “Tell me,” Irie demanded. “If I told you to let me die to save their lives, would you do it?”

“Yes. Not without hesitation. But I would do it.”

“Why?”

“Because you asked.” 

She turned her head and his fingers grazed her cheek, then fell to cup her face gently. “Tell me if it came to it, you’d kill me to protect them.”

The frown deepened on his face and a thousand arguments rose in his mind. He brushed them aside with a sigh and maintained his course. “Yes. If you asked me to, I would.”

“How can you…” She trailed off, but didn’t move away. They were locked like that, the barest of contact.

“Similar promises,” he murmured. He glanced down at the callouses on her hands, still absently following the grain of her bow. “That is what it means to be a knight.”

“I’m not a knight.” 

She was wrong, but there wasn’t a point in contradicting her. “A protector then.”

“I can’t give you peace.” Irie said abruptly. “I can’t give you a gentle life. There's no happy ending for me when this is over.”

“I know.” 

She set her bow to the side and left her hands empty. “If I told you to leave, would you?”

“Yes.”

“And if I told you to kiss me?”

“Yes.”

“I might still die tonight, the others said the Fae Queen is coming for me.” She was hardened under the moonlight, something otherworldly. She did look like a knight, no armor or sword, but fierce. A guardian at heart, no less noble, no less brave. Determination lined her brow and mouth. “Promise me that you’ll protect them.”

“I will. Until I have no breath to draw and no blood to spill. I promise to protect them.” The words had barely left his lips and she was drawing closer. His hand was still on her cheek, which had grown warm beneath his touch. 

“How do you always know what to say?” She couldn’t possibly know how beautiful she was, all rigid lines and dark edges, from deep brown skin to her infinite blue eyes. She reminded him of sunken treasure, a mystery until opened, something hidden below the depths, always waiting for the right person to carry the key.

“I weigh every word carefully.”

“The curse of power.” From someone else, it might have made him flinch, but there was a sorrow to the way she set it. An empathy. He could almost see her phantom wings stretched out behind her. _Forsaken_ , the Fae called her. _Traitor_ , the merfolk called him. Outcasts left to rely on others to bring them a sense of home, unable to return to their own. Could she feel that fragile thread of connection?

“Ask me to save you a dance again.”

“Irie,” he breathed. At some point, they had drawn close enough that their noses brushed. Their proximity turned her ethereal and it was a struggle to remember to breathe, let alone speak. “Would you save me a dance if we survive tonight?”

“Ask again without the threat of impending death.”

“Will you save me a dance?”

She paused and he let her summon her courage. This moment between them took more of her strength than every time she forced herself to keep fighting. He’d seen it, engraved on her stooping shoulders and the bags beneath her eyes. She would fight until there was nothing left. And she was fighting now. He could see the impulse, feel the tension cloud the little space they had left. He resigned himself to walk away when she asked.

“Always.”

“Will you dance with me now?”

“Caprice,” a twitch of her lips, a smile so quick that he nearly missed it. “We’re on a roof. And you almost died a few minutes ago.”

“What if this is our last chance?”

Irie pulled away, the near-kiss fading as she bent to help him to his feet. **_(_ ** There was regret and relief in equal measure. His gaze couldn’t help but ghost her lips. **_)_ **She was careful with his bad shoulder, a contrast to her easy strength, and he managed to get back up. The ladder down was trickier, but she waited for him at the bottom in that simple silence that always seemed to say more than their conversations. 

Back on the solid ground of the second floor, he offered her his hand. Irie took it, less reluctance than the first time they’d done this so long ago. Almost a year. Had she really been in his life that long? It felt like only an hour and an eternity.

They were nearly the same height, a revelation that always struck him when they stood this close. He grasped her hand in a strong grip, his other around her waist, hers against his shoulder. They started slow with a waltz. He didn’t hum this time, she wouldn’t want the others to hear.

The steps carried them across the floor softly. Her cape whipped behind her like a ballgown, his leaden exhaustion weighed like they’d spent the night at some party instead of a battle. It was easier to pretend. The sirens called in the distance, the faint ripples of music penetrating the still room. Her hand moved to cup the back of his neck. Something sombered and the waltz fell away until she was leaning against his chest and they were swaying in patient circles. There was no need to speak.

Her head rested on his good shoulder, he kept a loose touch on her waist. This moment was endless and they danced in the eye of the hurricane, the stolen moment of something like peace amid the storm. Her eyes closed and he knew that he’d fallen in love with her.

Caprice pressed a light kiss to her forehead and felt her stiffen, though she didn’t draw away. It hurt to know that she naturally rejected soft touch, as though she’d spent a life deprived of it or she was instinctually prepared for a blow. **_(_ ** He’d heard the stories, in a way, she had been. **_)_ ** _I_ _promise to fill your days with kind gestures_ , he swallowed the vow, but it lingered as they made another revolution around the space.

They stopped moving gently and their foreheads touched. Was this going to be it? A kiss that wasn’t polluted with desperation or liquid courage or something else that would interfere. She was pulling him down carefully and he was ready to meet her, noses brushing, then lingering lips, the shadow of a kiss-

Chairs scraped downstairs and the others’ voices carried to their sanctuary. “Wait, where is Irie?” Magda asked somewhere below. “She hasn’t insulted me in the last ten minutes.”

“Ohhh,” replied Leonora. “Cap isn't here either do you think they’re-”

“Well, we are in a brothel,” Janus cut in.

The moment was broken as Irie rolled her eyes and stepped away, ready to put up her hood and don her armor. He stopped her with the barest of touches and left a kiss against her knuckles, a promise of _to be continued_.

“Irie.” He said and let her go. “I have faith in you.”

“I know.” She pulled her hood back up and turned to go, pausing with a half-glance back, so he was left with only her profile. “Do me a favor and try not to die.” A smile blossomed momentarily, a real one, and it was like he was seeing it for the first time. “You still owe me a real dance.”

“I do.” 

“Do we call up the stairs or?” Magda inquired.

“I mean, are we really eager to get back out there?” Leonora countered.

“Well no, but Irie is smarter than all of us, I thought we might need her advice…” Magda said.

“Cuz!” Janus yelled. Any lingering trace of what they shared was gone. “Stop fu-”

“Come down here!” Leonora covered quickly. 

“Janus,” Irie said as she descended the stairs. “If you call me your cousin one more time, I will feed you to Briar.”

“You wouldn’t hurt your family!” Janus replied with a lamentable amount of confidence.

Caprice didn’t follow, casting a glance out the window at the clouds obscuring the night sky. He let his eyes fall shut and pressed his head against the glass, wondering what the cost might be of surviving till the dawn and if they were about to find out. 

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, my goal for this week is finish/post an art trade for my friend, cross your fingers for me. For once, I will be writing something that isn't my own characters, can't wait. I might also start posting another old fic just because.
> 
> Have a good week!


End file.
